today's post on 70sbig

[f4thpathway]

There is a difference between recruiting motor units and muscle fibers and simply focusing on certain ones. Recruitment is crucial but it doesn't change the prime movers of an exercise. You can surely take your mental focus off of prime movers and put emphasis on secondary movers but that doesn't change the physical make up of the movement. Unless you alter form. He claims not to so I would assume he is simply turning up the volume in his mind.

Bodybuilding style does teach recruitment to a high degree and does create a strong mental connection to the muscles. When applied to units other than the prime movers, however, it is nothing more than a mental connection. Yoda might be able to alter the physical make up of a movement but mere mortals cannot. And it makes no sense to use a movement that primarily trains a particular group of muscles and not desire to train them.

[Roland Conde]

I don't know if this is thread hijacking, but I don't think so, so I'm going to throw it out there.

Have you guys seen Justin's post yesterday on focusing on muscle groups during a movement? I thought there were some good points, but it was overall a bit odd, especially this paragraph.



One of the common themes of Rip and this board is if you do a movement correctly, you don't need to (and shouldn't) focus on specific muscle groups because physics and anthropometry do the job of deciding which muscle groups should do what work and when. And those muscles get strong exactly in proportion to the load that physics and anthropometry require of them to perform the movement. Thus leading to a good functional strength balance.

Is what Justin suggesting Re: his LB Squat even possible?

If what he's saying is not mispoken, i.e he really thinks he isn't using his hamstrings at all, then something is wrong there. I don't like the tone of that paragraph in general.

[PackMule]

I've been trying to get some more distance between my intensity and volume day and so repeated 290 for the 3rd time today and so focused on working quickly through them and I got to thinking about this issue. Given Justin's increased focus on reigning oneself in on volume day, I wonder whether this short rest interval thing isnt simply an artificial way of accomplishing that, but done in a way that makes you feel like your still working hard and pushing limits? It;s certainly going to feel hard to finish the workout if you push on with shorter rest intervals, but once that metabolic recovery is complete, which is a matter of minutes rather than days, there is far less structural recovery required simply because your overall volume (load X reps) was lower. It's not so much that the benefit in conditioning is beneficial, but that it prevents you from pushing so hard that you're too fried to make PRs on Intensity day.

Seems like it could be a kind of chicken and egg thing since if your weight is low enough you won't need super long rests.

[Rob Israel]

LOL:

When applied to units other than the prime movers, however, it is nothing more than a mental connection. Yoda might be able to alter the physical make up of a movement but mere mortals cannot.

Should have called this thread Shit Justin says...

[f4thpathway]

He might be Yoda.

[sergeant_81]

I noted during my stint in weightlifting that rest times tended to be shorter in my programming. I'd walk away from a heavy set of squats just long enough to get a quick shot of water before my coach was ordering me to get my ass back under the bar again. Rest periods between doubles and singles of the competition lifts were also short - I don't think he ever let me get over a minute or two. From what I've read this is pretty common. Not sure if the point was conditioning or the fact the workouts were already over two hours most of the time.

[MattJ.D.]

If what he's saying is not mispoken, i.e he really thinks he isn't using his hamstrings at all, then something is wrong there. I don't like the tone of that paragraph in general.

he doesn't think that, what he means is, say he is doing low bar squats, the bar comes forward and back angle changes, the load has gone to the quads and the back..thats what he means

[Roland Conde]

he doesn't think that, what he means is, say he is doing low bar squats, the bar comes forward and back angle changes, the load has gone to the quads and the back..thats what he means

What he said, though, was the form of two reps where he focuses on different muscles was 'identical'. This would imply no shifting in the positioning of the bar.

[Michael Wolf]

What he said, though, was the form of two reps where he focuses on different muscles was 'identical'. This would imply no shifting in the positioning of the bar.

This.

Once again, the quote in question is

Nowadays I can perform a low bar squat in two different ways — one that uses the hamstrings and one that doesn’t — but make the two reps look identical.

He's not talking about knees coming forward and a change in the back angle.

[s-m]

I don't think it's possible to do a compound movement and not include the muscles in that area at all. What I think he's saying is that you can and should be able to focus on specific muscles in the midst of doing a compound movement. I didn't find the statement that controversial, especially as it relates to support exercises.